Nescafé partnered with Mayday to design and build a smart, social, and cohesive web presence across 53 global markets.

→ Experience Design
→ Product Management
→ Account Management

One of the last projects I worked on at Mayday was a full redesign and build of Nescafé’s flagship web property. Michael Chrisment, the global head of integrated marketing at Nescafé, said that “the dotcom is a reflection of us talking to people; this approach is dead. It should be much more inclusive and allow conversations.” With this in mind we embarked on creating a web product that would allow for essentials like ecommerce, while also mixing in the ability to co-create with the audience on Tumblr.

Nescafé stipulated that the product had to be able to be managed by 53 individual markets across the globe. We would work with key internal stakeholders to learn what an effective method of content management would be on a system as bare bones as Tumblr’s. Creative use of tagging structures and the network’s API gave us the capability to place content in specific areas without worrying about chronology.

We would then go on to use this technical framework to help inform design, taking additional cues from the social ecosystem the site would live in, as well as the brand refresh that had just been completed by Ogilvy. The end result put a blend of shoppable product and UGC front and center.

The finished product was a core build and theme for the global site that could be cloned and localized for each individual market. This made the technical lift a breeze from market to market, allowing leads in each country to focus on what they did best — content. The launch was a success, garnering great press across the board, and becoming a model for rethinking what a social web presence can be.